Exploring How Tangible Tools Enable Collaboration in a Multi-touch Tabletop Game

Abstract

Abstract. Digital tabletop surfaces afford multiple user interaction and collaboration. Hybrid tabletops that include both tangible and multi-touch elements are increasingly being deployed in public settings (e.g. Microsoft Surface, reacTable). Designers need to understand how the different characteristics of tangible and multi-touch interface elements affect collaborative activity on tabletops. In this paper, we report on a mixed methods exploratory study of a collaborative tabletop game about sustainable development. We explore the effects of tangible and multi-touch tools on collaborative activity. Forty-five participants, in trios, played the game using both versions of the tools. Our analysis includes quantitative performance measures, qualitative themes and behavioral measures. Findings suggest that both tangible and multi-touch tools enabled effective tool use and that collaborative activity was more influenced by group dynamics than tool modality. However, we observed that the physicality of the tangible tools facilitated individual ownership and announcement of tool use, which in turn supported group and tool awareness.

Exploring Social Interaction With a Tangible Music Interface

“…It has been argued that tangibility supports manipulative access and fluidity of sharing (Hornecker et al, 2007;Speelpenning et al, 2011). We observed that the availability of an extensive collection of objects and a large surface allows for a collective haptic exploration and experience, in which visitors can smoothly join or leave at any time.…”

“…Moreover, seeing the use of these viewfinders from a distance indicates the type of activity and facilitates handovers between visitors. Similarly, Futura (Speelpenning et al, 2011) is a collaborative tabletop game about sustainability that includes two tangible magnifying glasses that provide players with additional information using realtime visualisations. Another example is the use of passive polarised glasses for playing with a tabletop children's game that shows a stereoscopic display (Hoberman et al, 2012).…”

Designing Cultural Values into Interaction

“…One example by Horn describes an approach to tangible interaction in which designers can evoke "social constructions or conventions", cultural forms such as counting systems, games, or currencies that often involve a physical artifact (Horn suggests that a high fidelity reproduction of the original cultural form is necessary) [34]. Horn and others have shown that cultural forms can be used for interaction design to utilize users' cognitive, physical, and emotional resources to increase usability and create meaningful experiences for users and observers [5,34,36,59]. We extend this work, using cultural forms for interaction and experiencing values.…”

Exploring How a Co-dependent Tangible Tool Design Supports Collaboration in a Tabletop Activity

“…However, the empirical findings of previous studies are contradictory [17,21,24]. Several studies suggest that multi-touch tabletops enable more synchronous collaboration than traditional user interfaces [22,24]. Traditional computer technologies, such as a single mouse with PC, do not allow synchronous activity for multiple users [20].…”

“…The assignment can be done to encourage (but not enforce) users to collaborate. Antle and Wise also propose that using tangible rather than touch-input objects reduces the chances of one user ignoring the assignments and taking over, or undoing another's actions because of social norms around object ownership and use (based on [24]). Taken together a set of unique codependently sensed, tangible, and user-assigned input objects may encourage flexible opportunities for collaboration.…”